12 Nov
2008
12 Nov
'08
7:03 p.m.
On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 03:26:26PM -0700, Stephen Doonan wrote:
In my case, music reading was hard because my eyes
have different focal
planes. The harder I tried to focus, the more it looked like the notes
were dancing on the page.
That can probably be corrected using the right glasses... If you can
communicate using this medium, i.e. read a computer screen, you should
be able to read music as well. The technicalities are not difficult,
it broadens your horizon, and it's never too late to learn it...
OTOH, there is a lot of truth in what you write:
When I learned my piano recital piece at 12 years old,
an Impromptu by
Schubert, I was lucky. My mother had a recording of Vladimir Horowitz
playing the same piece,
knowing Horowitz, probably a very nice rendering of it...
so I used the recording to learn the piece by
ear, except that I learned and played it a half-step higher than it was
written (it was written in B-flat). I learned that many years later when
a friend played the same piece in what I thought was the wrong key.
Quite strange that your teacher(s) never noticed you played it in
the wrong key ! I learned the 'Promenade' of 'Pictures at an
Exhibition' that way - luckily in the right key :-)
I think that there was at least one benefit in not
learning to read
music, and that is that my concept of music was not overly set or
influenced by the conventions of sheet music. I learned more about
sound, especially harmony.
Same here. When my voice changed I was expelled from the boys
choir and promoted to organist (the choir's conductor was also
my piano teacher). I learned practical harmony well before I had
any formal teaching of it, and that's a skill you never forget.
I learned that a key signature for example is
mostly just a notational convenience, ever since the equal temperament
system of tuning gave us a complete 12-tone chromatic scale. Most of the
music since Bach's time depends upon this "keyless" tuning and its
introduction of much more complex and rich harmonic possibilities.
Well, Bach's 'well tempered' tuning is not the same as equal temperament,
each key still has its typical character - but you can use all of them.
Nor is equal temperament the ultimate - I've been rediscovering the
charms of unequal temperaments, and of modal music, as the years passed.
Quite much of the minimalist 'electronica' is quite modal - and for good
reasons.
I'm sorry to be babbling. :-)
You're welcome !
--
FA
Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia
Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.